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Transparency doesn’t make decision right

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The Dispatch.

The abortive attempt of Ohio's gerrymandered legislature to suppress voting by punishing
counties that would mail out unsolicited absentee-ballot applications, was morally wrong.

To claim that it’s necessary so that we have statewide uniformity (i.e., reduced access
statewide) is just a fall-back position from the old “it’s to prevent (virtually nonexistent) voter
fraud.”

The Dispatch is a part of this problem. It opposed the 2012 referendum that sought
party-neutral redistricting.

Then there’s the Tuesday editorial “Liberating free speech” that informed us that the U.S.
Supreme Court's McCutcheon decision, like the Citizens United decision before it, was just the
right call.

The entire piece, with its reassurances that all we need is transparency (which, as everyone
knows, we don't have) is as wrongheaded and disingenuous as can be.

Money is not speech, and people are not corporations. The more money an individual (or
corporation) can contribute to a candidate or a party, the more access and influence that
individual (or corporation) gets. It’s really that simple.

Voters knowing who gave how much to which party or candidate won’t matter a whit, just as it
does not now.